Tara Reade: I Used to Think That Charges of Media Bias Were a Republican Talking Point. But Now I'm Living It In Real Time.

From Buzzfeed, but excerpted by John Sexton:

"It was really devastating when [Kirsten] Gillibrand and Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton, all on the same day, just basically implied my story wasn’t true and they believe Joe Biden. I can't describe to you what that felt like," Reade said on Thursday, describing herself as a "lifelong Democrat" and particularly a fan of Abrams, the former Georgia state minority leader who has been campaigning to serve on the ticket with Biden as his vice presidential nominee...

"I used to think that a Republican talking point was to call the mainstream media biased," Reade said. 'So I used to think, ‘Oh, that's just a talking point for them. I don’t believe it.' But now I'm living it, real time, and I see it -- like, I see it for what it is. Because I am a Democrat, or I was. But now I'm not anything, really. I'm politically homeless."

...

The TV network that has asked her on most frequently, she said, has been Fox News, from which she said Thursday she’d received four or more invitations to come on air. Only in the last day or two have other TV networks expressed interest; Reade said early on Thursday that she had just received and was discussing an invitation from ABC News, had been contacted by MSNBC that morning, and CBS News had reached out to her the previous night.

Reade had kept saying no to Fox because she believed, correctly, that the leftwing media would use a Fox interview as evidence this was nothing but a "rightwing" set-up. Despite her being a lifelong Democrat, former Biden aide, and Elizabeth Warren supporter.

The only reason networks other than Fox reached out to her is because Ben Smith embarrassed them by noting the liberal media had pulled the same embargo tactic on Juanita Broadderick in 1999.

And yet, Ms. Reade told me Wednesday that the only offers she's had to appear on television have come from Fox News, including a call from the prime time host Sean Hannity. She has so far turned them down.

"I've been trying to just kind of wait to get someone in the middle," she said in a phone interview. "I don’t want to be pigeonholed as a progressive, I don't want to be pigeonholed as a Trump supporter."

CNN, NBC and MSNBC, whose DNA -- even in a pandemic -- is politics, have covered her on their websites and on air but haven’t put her on camera.

"They're not offering to put me on TV -- they're just doing stories," Ms. Reade told me. "No anchors, no nothing like that." She'd most like to tell her story to a network television anchor she admires -- CBS's Gayle King is one, she said -- but they haven't called.

So she's planning to accept Fox News's offer for an interview to air this weekend, she said, with "someone a little more up the middle." She declined to say who, but a person who has spoken to her said Ms. Reade is in talks with Chris Wallace.

...

The booking would be a coup for the conservative network, and give its on-air hosts a club with which to beat a mainstream media that can't quite explain why it won't book Ms. Reade, while Julie Swetnick, a woman with a shaky claim against a Supreme Court nominee, got airtime during a prime time evening broadcast.

...

There's still no clear explanation, however, for why Ms. Reade hasn't been on mainstream TV. Representatives for CNN and MSNBC declined to explain why they haven't booked a woman who is, whether you believe her or not, one of the few newsmakers right now who could cut through the pandemic.

Ben Smith points out (surprisingly) that the media's Embargo Tactic makes little sense now because the leftwing media no longer has any power to keep stories out of the public purview. They're not hiding the story from anyone; they're just declining to give it the very dubious value of their Stamp of Official Recognition.

They're acting like they're still gatekeepers. Like they still matter.

Like anyone actually trusts them.

We don't. We really don't.

But because absolutely no one else would interview her, she finally agreed to be interviewed by obnoxious partisan liberal Chris Wallace this Sunday.

Yay...?

posted by Ace at 05:17 PM

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